


when we were young and crossed the stars

by katsumi



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Childhood Friends, F/M, Found Family, Friends to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-25
Updated: 2017-01-25
Packaged: 2018-09-19 21:40:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9461444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katsumi/pseuds/katsumi
Summary: He tells her he’s been given his own ship, his choice of his own crew. When she asks who he’ll be picking, he cocks his head at her.“You and K, of course,” he says, like he can’t believe she’s even asking the question when she’s been griping about it for almost six years.Jyn and Cassian meet as children caught up in the rebellion and grow up together.





	

Saw spends maybe a year trying groom Jyn as a soldier before he decides she’s not worth the risk, that the Erso name will surely drag him down with her someday. She’s ten when he abandons her at an anti-Imperial mining facility, taking off too fast for her small legs to catch up to him.

 

Coughing in the dust and watching his ship arc up into the sky, Jyn thinks with startling calmness that he didn’t even bring her to the rebellion. He would raise her to be a soldier, but if she couldn’t fight for him, he’d see to it that she wouldn’t fight for anyone.

 

She steels herself in the sand, locks her knees. She will prove him wrong.

 

* * *

 

It takes a while, but when she finally hears rumors of a rebel alliance vessel docking, she sneaks on board without a second thought. But there’s no escape hatch for her to hide in this time, and someone finds her almost immediately: a boy a few years older than herself with hollow cheeks and wide, furious eyes.

 

She’s not shocked by how fast he turns on her, slamming her into the wall—this is war, and she of all people knows that children are not exempt from war. She tells him, even with his hand at her throat, that she’s an orphan, that she wants to join the rebellion, that she has nowhere else to go.

 

“You’re a child,” he spits. “We don’t recruit children.”

 

But she knows that’s not true: he’s a child, too.

 

* * *

 

His name is Cassian. And even though he looks at her with dark, distrusting eyes, when they land on Yavin IV, he vouches for her. She’s not a threat, he says; we could put her to work in the control room, he says.

 

She corners him in the hallway afterwards, en route to her new room. (Cassian made a convincing case, but he’s just a boy; she suspects it’s her Erso name that clinched the deal.)

 

“I don’t want to work in the control room,” she says. “I’m a soldier.”

 

“Soldiers do what they’re told,” Cassian snaps.

 

“Well, I don’t want to.”

 

“What do you want to do, then?” he asks, like he’s making fun of her; they both know she has no power, here.

 

“I want to stay with you,” she says, honestly. She’s only known him a few hours, but he spoke up for her. And that small act alone means he might actually be the closest friend she has in the entire world.

 

His eyes widen with such naked shock, Jyn wonders whether anyone has ever said something like that to him before.

 

“Fine,” he grunts, not quite meeting her eye.

 

* * *

 

Cassian works in recruiting, which means Jyn spends the next several years jumping from planet to planet, playing hopscotch with the stars.

 

When on Yavin, she bunks with a room of other girls—most of them older and in training to be pilots—and passes the time in weapons training, comms training, strategy training. She rarely has a chance to even see Cassian until they’re shipped off again, and then he’s almost all she sees.

 

Off-planet, she play cards with him in the U-Wing cargo hold, and she sneaks him the freeze-dried vegetables from her rations that she hates eating, and sometimes he brings her up to the cockpit and drills her on the controls, “in case she ever needs to know how to fly this thing.” She spends her nights curled into a ball a few feet from him on the metal floor, and finds she sleeps even better than in her bed back at the base.

 

Each time they land on a new planet or moon, he and the rest of the crew head out and leave her to watch the ship. She complains every time, and Cassian rolls his eyes every time, but he never lets her come with him.

 

When she’s fifteen, he picks up a battered and memory-wiped Imperial droid and reprograms it. Jyn’s thrilled: finally, someone _else_ to watch the ship. Surely, she can be trusted to use her blaster by now.

 

But no, Cassian still won’t budge. And now she has to wait in the ship with the nightmare droid whose idea of stimulating conversation is pointing out each and every way their mission could end in fiery death.

 

“I hate K2,” she tells Cassian, the second he re-boards the ship after their first mission with all three of them.

 

He laughs. “No you don’t, you hate me. Redirect your anger.”

 

“I do hate you,” she agrees, reaching up on her tiptoes to shake snow off his hood. “But I hate K2, too.”

 

“Kay-too-too,” he snickers under his breath, and she’s so caught off guard by his smile—soft, a little crooked—that she almost forgets what she was yelling at him about.

 

* * *

 

She officially enlists at sixteen and frowns her way through her medal ceremony. (The rebellion wants to believe that they are protectors of the innocent, that children—well, most children—don’t fight until old enough to be given an official title. Jyn won’t argue; if they can sit with what they’re doing, that’s their problem.)

 

She has a blaster all her own now, and she’s more than capable of using it, but Cassian still won’t let her out of the ship.

 

“It’s not up to me,” he says, with practiced patience, when Jyn kicks over an ammunition canister in frustration. “I’m not in charge.”

 

He bends to pick up the scattered equipment, and Jyn glares down at him.

 

“You will be someday,” she retorts. “And when you are, you better take me with you.”

 

“Promotions aren’t guaranteed,” he says, mild.

 

Jyn rolls her eyes. “Don’t be stupid. They’re going to promote you. For some reason, they seem to like you.”

 

“Can’t imagine why,” he says, a little too sharp to be a joke.

 

She pauses. He’s expecting snark, for her to laugh it off, to needle him. But this is Cassian.

 

This is the boy who reads briefing memos until he slumps asleep on top of them, who fires a weapon with such deadly accuracy, even the rebel generals feel safer when he’s at their backs. This the boy who silently cried himself to sleep after a mission gone wrong—four soldiers down, and she’ll never forget his face as he climbed back into the ship, the empty grief in his eyes. This is the boy who stood tall in front of the council the very next day, betraying nothing, his tone even and direct as he debriefed.

 

This is the boy who stood up for her when no one else would, when he had no reason to.

 

She crouches down beside him, reaching out to help him pick up the fallen ammo, and her shoulder bumps up against his. He concentrates on the task, doesn’t look at her.

 

“I can,” she says, just above a whisper. “I can imagine why.”

 

“Thanks,” Cassian says, very soft.

 

They reach for the same piece of ammo, and Jyn jolts away when his fingers brush hers.

 

* * *

 

He gets promoted within a year, and when he tracks her down to tell her, she throws her arms around his neck. She regrets it almost instantly—they’re in the hallway, and he’s her superior officer, but even more than all that: this is new territory for them. This isn’t what they do.

 

But then his arms lock around her, fast and tight, and he laughs into her her shoulder, and she finds herself laughing back. She just barely manages to congratulate him before whispering, _I told you so_.

 

She pulls back, and he tells her he’s been given his own ship, his choice of his own crew. When she asks who he’ll be picking, he cocks his head at her.

 

“You and K, of course,” he says, like he can’t believe she’s even asking the question when she’s been griping about it for almost six years.

 

And yes, a part of Jyn expected Cassian would pick her when the time came; they’ve never spoken about it, and Jyn doesn’t have enough experience to know for sure, but she’s reasonably confident that they’re something close to best friends.

 

But another part—a secret part, a part she thought she’d left huddled in a Lah’mu bunker—assumed it would never happen. That when the time came to make a choice, he wouldn’t choose her.

 

She stares at him in silence; there’s so much she wants to say, but it all clogs up in her throat. His smile falters.

 

“Jyn?” he asks, nervous now. “Is that okay?”

 

She nods, blinks away the sudden and alarming wetness at the corners of her eyes.

 

Cassian frowns, stepping closer. “If you don’t want to…”

 

“I do!” she almost shouts. “I do. I just—”

 

She can’t think of what to say, and she’s dangerously close to hugging him again, to burying her nose against the scruff of his neck. But that seems too overwhelming, so instead, she punches him square in the shoulder.

 

Cassian stumbles back a step, but his growl is insincere, his eyes too bright for anger.

 

“You’re welcome,” he scoffs, like he’s playing it off. But Jyn knows him well enough by now to hear what he’s really saying.

 

_Thank you_.

 

* * *

 

For a little while, it’s perfect.

 

K2 minds the ship, complaining profusely, and Jyn gets to the explore each new planet at Cassian’s side. Her whole life has been working up to this—her loaded blaster tight in her grip, her steps falling in perfect time with his—and it’s even better than she’d hoped it would be.

 

The work is bleak, of course, and dangerous. But it’s them against the galaxy, and there seem to be no limits on where they might go, how far they might stretch their fingers.

 

Sometimes, Jyn glances at him across the cockpit, at the line of his jaw that’s grown sharper with age. His shoulders are wider, now, and he towers above her in a way he never used to.

 

Sometimes, she looks at him—all scruff and frown, equal parts exhaustion and drive—and she wonders.

 

She wonders what it would feel like to reach over and push that one strand of hair from his face. To slide across the cockpit, to crawl into his lap. To press her lips to his temple, let her palms rest against his cheeks. To see if he would lean forward, cross those last few inches, and kiss her.

 

She wonders. And while they never talk about it, sometimes she could swear he wonders, too.

 

* * *

 

A few months in, they try to find a contact on a far off desert moon and everything goes wrong.

 

Cassian had implied that he and the contact had some sort of history, that this man might resent him. But even Cassian seems surprised when, tucked into an alleyway, the man pulls his blaster and jams it against Cassian’s temple.

 

Jyn has been hanging back to keep watch, and she knows what Cassian would say: stay back, let me talk him down.

 

But she can’t risk that. She lurches forward, pulls her own blaster.

 

“Let go,” she snarls. “ _Now._ ”

 

Her hand is shaking, her vision nearly blurring, and she curses herself for it. She’s been in tight scrapes before, but not like this, not where a single wrong move would see Cassian’s brain matter splatter across the brick.

 

“Jyn!” Cassian gasps, pleading, but it’s too late: the man swerves the blaster away from Cassian, too fast for Jyn to react, and shoots her in the shoulder.

 

The pain is scorching, immediate; it sends her reeling to her back and blinking up at the fire red sky, the sound of Cassian’s screams like some distant waterfall.

 

By the time she’s processed what’s happening and managed to push herself up on one elbow, it’s done. Cassian falls to his knees at her side, and she can see the body of the man face down in the dirt behind him.

 

“Where, where did he—” Cassian starts, frantic, eyes darting across her body before stopping on her chest, where the blood is trickling down and staining her clothes red.

 

He pales, and she can feel his fear like lightning through her spine.

 

“Shoulder,” she says, fast. “It’s just my shoulder.”

 

He bows his head in quick, breathless relief. And then he straightens, all business, moving to loop her uninjured arm around his neck.

 

“Good, you can walk. We need to get out of here.”

 

Somehow, they make it back to the ship and off of the planet before anyone tracks them down. As soon as they’ve made the jump to hyperspace, Cassian climbs down to the lower deck to find Jyn halfway through a lame attempt to peel off her jacket without pressing at her wound.

 

“Stop,” he says. “Let me help.”

 

“I can do it, I just—”

 

“Let me _help_ ,” he shouts, and she’s so surprised by it—the steel in his eyes, the furious clench of his jaw—that she just stares at him, speechless.

 

He sags a little under her gaze.

 

“Please,” he amends, like he thinks she might not let him. (Like he thinks she doesn’t want to let him.)

 

“Okay.”

 

She offers him her jacket sleeve, and he swallows. His fingers shake as he pushes the fabric back to reveal more blood speckled across her skin.

 

The wound is shallow, nothing a bacta patch or two won’t fix. It hurts something awful, but that’s no surprise; getting shot _hurts_ , no matter how deep. She wants to joke and whine about it to give herself something to concentrate on, to throw so much crap at Cassian that he rolls his eyes and pushes at her leg to get her to stop.

 

But he dabs at her skin in stony silence, and she can’t bring herself to break it. When he holds his palm against her shoulder to press the patch in place, he takes a shuddering, broken breath that somehow hurts worse than the shot itself.

 

“Cassian—” she starts.

 

“This is my fault,” he says, head down.

 

“It isn’t.”

 

“It _is,_ ” he insists, his voice sharp. “That man, he—he had every right to hate me, Jyn. _Every_ right, after what I—” He breaks off, swallows. “This was meant for me, not you. This is _my fault_.”

 

She thinks for a moment she should ask: about that man, and what happened to spark the rage she saw flash across his face when he turned on her. But it doesn’t matter. She knows that Cassian has had to make terrible choices for the sake of the rebellion; she has seen his eyes grow hollow over the years, noticed how he shakes in his sleep more nights than he used to. The details of those choices won’t change anything.

 

“This is war,” she reminds him. “This happens. And I’m on your team. It’s my job to take a shot for you.”

 

His hand flies to her neck, grips at her chin.

 

“No,” he says, looking at her now; his eyes are wide and desperate. “It’s not.”

 

“It is! You’re my commanding officer, that’s what that means!”

 

“Then maybe I can’t be your commanding officer anymore!” he shouts, and for one moment her heart stops beating. Then the adrenaline pumps so fast through her veins, her vision blurs.

 

“Get out,” she spits, wresting her chin away from his grip.

 

“I—”

 

“Get _out_!” she shouts again, turning away even though the movement sends fiery pain through her shoulder.

 

He does.

 

She hears him scramble up the ladder to the upper deck and doesn’t let herself cry until she’s sure he’s closed the hatch behind him.

 

* * *

 

For the first time in years, she falls asleep alone. She wonders if this is how it will be, from now on.

 

But when she wakes in the middle of the night, Cassian is there. He’s sitting, staring down at his hands in his lap, face cast in deep blue shadows from the control panel light. She wants to reach out, take his hand in hers; she doesn’t want to be responsible for that look on his face.

 

He notices her shift and turns to her. For a while, neither of them speaks.

 

“I’m sorry,” he says, finally.

 

“For which part?” she asks.

 

His eyes flick to her shoulder, heavy. “For getting you hurt. For yelling at you.”

 

She clenches her jaw. “That’s it?”

 

He closes his eyes, as if in pain.

 

“I don’t know what to do, Jyn,” he admits. “I don’t know if I can do this.”

 

“Work with me?” she asks.

 

He doesn’t say anything, but that’s confirmation enough, and the fear that spikes her gut is so strong, she’s almost sick.

 

“Fine,” she bites. “Then don’t. Find someone else, a better shot.”

 

“That’s not what I’m saying.”

 

“You’re saying you want to dump me,” she snaps. “One mission gone wrong and what, you’re just done with me?”

 

His hand closes over hers, tightening so she can’t wrestle herself away.

 

“Never,” he says. “Jyn, _never_. If you stop doing this, if you leave the rebellion, I would leave with you.”

 

He’s looking at her with such shattered, open panic, and she knows what he’s saying is true. He would leave with her. He has devoted his entire being to the rebellion, sacrificed his youth for it, put his life on the line for it more times than she can count. And still he would leave it, this cause that means so much to him, if only she asked him to.

 

She laces her fingers through his and it’s like all of a sudden, she can breathe again.

 

“No,” she says. “This is important, to both of us. You’re not leaving this.”

 

“I could,” he whispers.

 

She shakes her head. “You’d regret it. You’re not leaving this. And I’m not leaving you.”

 

He sniffs, dips his head, and she wishes her shoulder were healed already so she could sit up and tug him into her arms. Instead, she drags their joined hands to her chest, curls her other arm around his to hold him there, steady.

 

“I’m not leaving you,” she repeats. “So, you’re not allowed to leave me.”

 

He shakes his head, and when he looks up, his eyes are wet.

 

“I won’t,” he promises. “I don’t think I could if I wanted to. I think I’m stuck with you.”

 

She swallows a lump in her throat. “Yeah?”

 

He smiles, reaches over to brush the hair from her face. This thumb traces a soft line down her cheek.

 

“Yeah.”

 

* * *

 

For the almost-decade she spends with the rebellion, her name isn’t an issue. Until one day, it is.

 

They’re docked on Yavin, and Cassian pulls her aside in a crowded hallway, grip tight on her wrist.

 

“Not here,” he says, before she can ask. He takes her to his room—he’s a captain now; he gets his own space, even if he’s rarely there to sleep in it—and shuts the door behind them.

 

“What is it?” she says.

 

He leans back against the door, scrubs a hand across his face.

 

“New mission,” he says. “They want to find your father.”

 

She lets that sit for a moment. Her _father_. She thinks about him, now and again, but mostly she tries not to; she doesn’t want to dwell on what might have happened to him. Still, knowing he is alive is a warm, welcome relief.

 

She smiles, sitting down on the bed. Cassian doesn’t smile back.

 

“But?” Jyn prompts. Cassian furrows his brow.

 

“They want to find my father, but…”

 

She stops. She knows that face.

 

“But not alive,” she finishes.

 

He nods, grave. She pats the bed beside her, and he sinks down with a groan, rests his head in his hands.

 

“Why?” she asks.

 

“He’s building the Empire a new weapon, has been for years. The council thinks they can cripple it if they take your father out.”

 

Jyn frowns. “That doesn’t make sense. If he’s been working for years, his death won’t stop them from finishing the job. The Empire doesn’t leave things to chance that way.

 

Cassian turns to look at her, chin still resting on his knuckles. “I know.”

 

Jyn’s head is spinning. She leans a little closer to Cassian, focuses on the hard lines of his face to recenter herself.

 

“How do they plan on finding him?” she asks.

 

“You,” he says. “They want to use you to find Saw Gerrara. They want to use Gerrera to find your father.”

 

“Oh.” She can’t find any other words.

 

“Jyn,” he says, eyes steady on her. He has these wrinkles lines around his eyes, now: signs of wear he should be too young for. “What do you want to do?”

 

She thinks. She doesn’t want her father to die. She doesn’t want Cassian to have to be the one who kills him. But she also doesn’t want to see the Empire to continue to wreak so much havoc on the galaxy, to watch so many families destroyed like hers was.

 

And if it’s coming down to this, to the rebellion targeting her father, she at least wants a chance to say goodbye.

 

“I think we need to go,” she says. “We need to figure out what’s happening, and we’ll decide from there.”

 

Cassian hesitates. “I don’t want to have to use you like this.”

 

She leans into him, rests her arm against his. “I know. But if we go, just us and K2, we’ll have the space we need to figure it out. Honestly, Cassian, if the Empire is really doing everything those reports say, he might—” she swallows. “He might be better off dead.”

 

Cassian shifts, reaching out to lace his fingers through hers.

 

“I don’t want you to have to choose whether or not to kill your father.”

 

She rests her head against his shoulder. “Neither do I, but we are where we are. And I’m with you.”

 

He presses his lips to her forehead.

 

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s go.”

 

* * *

 

They’re sitting in the U-wing cockpit en route to Jedha, K2 prepping the ammo on the lower deck of the ship, when Cassian turns to her.

 

“Can you promise me something?”

 

She nods.

 

“I’m going to make the best choices I can, but we may have to move fast. If we find your father...if that happens, and you make a decision about what you want done, let me know as soon as you can.”

 

She studies him. “If I tell you not to kill him, you won’t?”

 

“No.” He doesn’t even hesitate. “Not if I can help it.”

 

It’s quiet on the ship, and this moment seems so soft in the purple glow of hyperspace.

 

“Why?” she asks.

 

“He is your family,” Cassian says, with a small smile. “And you are mine.”

 

And even though he’s never said it out loud before, of course—of _course_ —it’s true.

 

She doesn’t slide across the console and into his lap, as she once tried to keep herself from imagining. But she does reach out and pull the fabric of his jacket, tugging his torso towards her. She leans over and kisses him, a little rougher than she’d dreamed she would the very first time, but she can’t help it. He presses back just as strong, just as desperate. There’s something about this mission that makes her wonder how many more chances she’ll get, why she waited this long.

 

He pulls back first, rests his forehead against hers. He’s quiet save for his labored breath; his eyes are closed. When he reaches forward to cup her cheeks, she hears his unspoken _why_.

 

The control panel beeps; soon, they will pull out of hyperspace and the red sands of Jedha will pop up on the horizon. Jyn closes her eyes to drown out the sound.

 

“I wanted to,” she says. “I’ve wanted to for a while.”

 

She doesn’t need to see him to know that he’s smiling.

 

“Good,” he whispers. “Me, too.”

**Author's Note:**

> In the movie, they become each other's family after only a few days. I couldn't stop thinking about what would have happened if they'd had years to get to know each other and went into everything having already completed some of that journey we just see them start on screen. If Jyn had someone who stood up for her, and Cassian had someone who chose him for him. Anyway, it made me super emotional and then this happened.
> 
> [leralynne](http://leralynne.tumblr.com) on tumblr if you wanna come cry about rogue one


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